As the processing power of mobile communication devices continues to increase, the applications available on mobile communication devices continue to grow. One of the most valuable applications available to owners of mobile communication devices is the phone book or contacts application. The phone book of a user's contacts allows a user to store the contact information for the user's family, friends, associates, clients, vendors, providers, business contacts, etc. in the internal memory of the mobile communication device. Often times, owners who lose their mobile communication device lament the loss of the valuable contact information contained in the phone book application more than the loss of the equipment.
A smart card, such as Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card, is a portable memory chip used in some models of mobile communication devices, specifically those of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) variety. The smart card acts as a portable memory unit that may be removed from the mobile communication device and placed into a second mobile communication device. Often times the smart card is used to store a second copy of the user's phone book data that is otherwise stored in the internal memory of the mobile communication device. By storing a user's phone book to the smart card, the user can easily transfer the phone book information from one mobile communication device to another. To do so, the user simply slides the SIM card out of the old mobile communication device and into the new mobile communication device. Once the smart card is inserted into the new mobile communication device all of the necessary personal and provisioning data is immediately accessible to the processor contained in the new mobile communication device.
Smart card phone books do suffer some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that their data and file structures have not evolved to keep pace with applications which have been developed to capitalize on the processing power and storage capacity of mobile communication devices. For example, many smart cards are only able to store a single contact number per contact name. Thus, if an individual contact has multiple contact numbers, the smart card stores multiple entries for the individual treating each contact number for the same contact as a separate and new contact.
When mobile communication devices first entered mainstream society, it was common for a person to have only one contact number, namely a home telephone number. As such, data and file structures for early phone book application only had to account for a single contact number per person. However, in today's society, it is not uncommon for a single person to have multiple avenues of contact. For example, a single person may have a home phone number, office phone number, cellular telephone number, pager number, fax number, e-mail address, SMS message address, etc. Accordingly, current phone book applications for mobile communication devices have grown and expanded in their ability to store not only more contact data per person, but also a wider variety of data types. Despite the advancement of phone book applications, smart card data and file structures very often operate on the old data structures. Consequently, the discrepancy in data and file structures between the smart card and applications running on the mobile communication device limit the capacity to synchronize phone book information stored in the internal memory of the mobile device with phone book information stored on the smart card.
Another disadvantage of smart cards is that when a user enters a new contact number, edits a contact number or deletes a contact number, typically only the phone book data stored in internal memory is modified. In order to modify the phone book stored on the smart card, the user must actively synchronize the phone book data stored in internal memory with the phone book data stored on the smart card. If the user fails to initiate this synchronization, the smart card phone book will not be current.
Another disadvantage is evident when the user attempts to synchronize the phone book data stored in internal memory with data stored on the smart card. Conventional synchronization processes simply copy all of the contact information that exists in the source phone book data fields (either the internal phone book or smart card phone book) to the target phone book data fields (either the internal phone book or smart card phone book) regardless of whether the contact information already exists in the target phone book data fields. As a result, the target phone book data stored in either the internal memory of the mobile device or the smart card may contain duplicate information.